The components of an aeroengine gas-turbine combustor have to perform multiple tasks – control of external and internal air distribution, fuel injector feed, fuel/air atomisation, evaporation, and mixing, flame stabilisation, wall cooling, etc. The ‘rich-burn’ concept has achieved great success in optimising combustion efficiency, combustor life, and operational stability over the whole engine cycle. This paper first illustrates the crucial role of aerodynamic processes in achieving these performance goals. Next, the extra aerodynamic challenges of the ‘lean-burn’ injectors required to meet the ever more stringent NOx emissions regulations are introduced, demonstrating that a new multi-disciplinary and ‘whole system’ approach is required. For example, high swirl causes complex unsteady injector aerodynamics; the threat of thermo-acoustic instabilities means both aerodynamic and aeroacoustic characteristics of injectors and other air admission features must be considered; and high injector mass flow means potentially strong compressor/combustor and combustor/turbine coupling. The paper illustrates how research at Loughborough University, based on complementary use of advanced experimental and computational methods, and applied to both isolated sub-components and fully annular combustion systems, has improved understanding and identified novel ideas for combustion system design.

This paper will address the engineering performance differentiators for an F1 car and highlight the difference aerodynamics can make to that performance. It will also consider some basic aerodynamic challenges and the main tools used for aerodynamic exploration by teams.

This lecture recognises the background and distinguished work of Frederick William Lanchester, and notes that my background has a few similarities with his. These include a shared interest in wings, lift and vortices. My career at the NASA Langley Research Center spans the time-frame from America’s Super Sonic Transport through 2009. An early emphasis involved wind-tunnel testing of research aircraft models and the development of computer codes for subsonic aerodynamics of wing planforms. These attached-flow codes were applied to various configurations, including those with variable-sweep, dihedral, and more than one planform in both the analysis- and design-modes. These codes were used to provide a connection between leading-edge-forces and the associated additional lift on delta-wings with shed-vortex systems through the leading-edge suction analogy of Edward C. Polhamus. Subsequently, I extended the suction analogy to configurations with side-edges to predict the vortical-flow aerodynamics on complex configurations, including wing-strake combinations. These analysis codes could also be used in a design-by-analysis mode for configurations with leading-edge shed vortices. Later, I was involved in vortical-flow flight research with the F-106B and the F-16XL aircraft at cruise and maneuver conditions. Associated CFD predictions, generated by me and other members of the RTO/AVT-113 task group, have increased our understanding of the flight flow-physics measured on the F-16XL aircraft.

In his 1916 book, Aircraft in Warfare, the Dawn of the Fourth Arm, F.W. Lanchester wrote:

The recent successful flight trials of the Taranis low-observable unmanned demonstrator aircraft provide the latest evidence of the UK’s continued capacity for the entire design, development, manufacture, and flight testing of world-leading combat aircraft, particularly with regard to Aerodynamics. Taranis is both the culmination of many years’ research and development in the UK and a starting-point for the next generation of UK combat air systems.

In this lecture, Taranis is reviewed, in such detail as current sensitivities will allow, in the wider context of UK combat aircraft aerodynamic capability, exemplified by the leading roles taken by the UK in the Tornado and Typhoon programmes and the important contribution made to the development of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.

The immediate technical challenges associated with the aerodynamic design and qualification of a low-observable air vehicle are considerable. In this instance they have been compounded by the balanced view taken within the project of trade-offs against many parameters. However, the UK aerodynamics community faces equally stringent challenges in terms of the identification and delivery of the most appropriate future systems; increasingly complex and demanding operational and functional requirements; and, perhaps most of all, maintaining an affordable and cost-effective capability in the face of strict budgetary pressures and austere economic conditions.

Nevertheless, those challenges are accompanied by a wide range of opportunities, namely for national and international partnership; radically innovative engineering solutions and approaches; new thinking; and the engagement of the best minds and ideas in the UK academic community.

Taranis represented a big integration task, requiring a particular set of skills to pull together the total package, resting on a bedrock of mastery of the technical issues. It has been an inspirational experience for those of us who have worked on it. It has demonstrated that the UK is capable of achieving the most demanding current and anticipated military aerodynamic requirements and has signposted the way to an exciting and nationally important future.